Like these once prevalent views, our conventional understanding of marriage must yield to a more contemporary appreciation of the rights entitled to constitutional protection. Interpreting our state constitutional provisions in accordance with firmly established equal protection principles leads inevitably to the conclusion that gay persons are entitled to marry the otherwise qualified same sex partner of their choice. To decide otherwise would require us to apply one set of constitutional principles to gay persons and another to all others. The guarantee of equal protection under the law, and our obligation to uphold that command, forbids us from doing so. In accordance with these state constitutional requirements, same sex couples cannot be denied the freedom to marry.

Wachovia's decision to lend money to the NRCC -- itself reeling from a damaging financial scandal earlier this year -- is sure to draw charges of favoritism, as Wachovia denies credit and freezes assets for thousands of other customers.

Allegations of favoritism are especially delicate for Wachovia, given the company's disproportionate support of Republican campaigns and organizations.

Should be interesting to watch which campaigns the RNCC dumps money into over the next little while...

Considering how the Republicans are about to get the beating of their political lives in November, and putting aside the ethics and morality of Wall Street and the GOP, would you consider this to be a good investment by Wachovia? And people wonder how the economy could have tanked so badly with all of that conservative deregulation stuff coupled with the GOP/'lobbyists revolving door on K Street in an incestuous marriage of money and Republican politics.

Wachovia's decision to lend money to the NRCC -- itself reeling from a damaging financial scandal earlier this year -- is sure to draw charges of favoritism, as Wachovia denies credit and freezes assets for thousands of other customers.

Allegations of favoritism are especially delicate for Wachovia, given the company's disproportionate support of Republican campaigns and organizations.

Ed Snider is a man with two missions in life -- one that I wholeheartedly support, and another that I don't, some parts of which I in fact find repulsive. His day job is to bring a championship to Philadelphia with the two teams that he runs through Comcast-Spectacor, the Flyers and the 76ers. Although he hasn't succeeded in 25 years, he tends to be what we want in a sports owner here in Philly, willing to spend money (albeit sometimes foolishly) or shake things up if that's what's needed on the ice or on the hardwood. So far, so good.

In his spare time, he takes the millions of dollars that he's earned with the blessings of the Philadelphia sports fan and used a big chunk of it to promote conservative causes, moving increasingly to the far right with each passing political season. That's his right in a free society, but I also believe that running a pro sports franchise in a big city like Philadelphia is a kind of a public trust. That may explain why state and city taxpayers were willing to lend a financial hand -- $20 million, according to this article -- to help Snider construct the CoreStates/First Union.Wachovia/Citi/Wells Fargo Center back in the mid-1990s.

Sports and politics should not mix, not here and not now, less than four weeks before such a critical presidential election. But that's exactly what rabid GOP supporter Ed Snider will be doing this weekend...

snip

Now, he's making a huge in-kind donation to the McCain-Palin campaign in the arena that we taxpayers kicked in for, giving her a chance to skate her stuff in from of 19,500 mostly upscale male hockey fans from the swing suburbs outside Philly. It will be a warm and fuzzy "hockey mom" event that will make people forget about her ugly and hate-filled rallies of the last week, where she charged that the Democratic candidate for president "pals around with terrorists" as a lynch-mob of an audience hooted and yelled out things like "kill him." (Odd as it sounds, hockey fans are more polite than Palin fans.) (read the whole thing...)

This is no different than the "free speech zones" that they are using to cage demonstrators in like animals. Are all of you journalists happy that you let the rights of citizens slip without speaking out?

Well? Here is your future headline if the media doesn't hit back hard on these things:

The incumbent kept the opposing candidates locked inside achallengers area to prevent them from saying "negative things."

Here is an opportunity for the media to take back the truth. And, even, to give some sense of freedom back to the people. Freedoms are being stolen from the people, the media...

Who will be next?And will there be anyone remaining to publicly stand up for their rights?

DOW Jones Industrial Index down nearly more than 300400 500 points since the opening bell. NYSE Trading would be suspended one hour if there is an 1100 point decline in the DJIA before 2:00 pm today under current NYSE rules.

McCain's announced plan was to make every attempt to shift the focus of the campaign off of the economy and onto Barack Obama. In particular, McCain wanted to use a kind of Kevin Bacon seven-degrees-of-separation argument to tie Obama to the dubious activities of people for which Obama bears no responsibility. It was a weak strategy to begin with, but a tumbling stock market will make it impossible. Perhaps even more troublesome for McCain is the fact the Obama campaign has launched a major media campaign to re-raise and educate the public about the Keating 5 scandal.

Don't look at the economy that is running off the tracks and "ssshhhh! about all that Keating 5 stuff":

Now, take a look at these pictures. Here are the CEOs of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG and the Lehman Brothers. I know the first thing that jumps out about these faces is that they all happen to be white, and they all happen to be responsible for stealing. But what you have to understand is that these whites are a product of a society that made them that way. It was the neighborhoods and the schools they went to: Harvard, Yale, the Wharton School of Business. They never learned the value of doing real, actual work and the first step to fixing that is better role models, so kids growing up white today don’t think the only way out of Westchester is corporate crime. Or a government handout or sailing. So I get it, the temptation is to look at McCain and vote against him because you don’t see an individual, you just see another typical welfare whitey.

And it’s true, he’s spent his entire life shuffling from one low-paying government job to another. Well, except those years he spent in prison. Typical! And between you and me, he’s not very articulate. Oh, he may have some street smarts, but he’s not what you call an educated man. He freely admits he’s ignorant about the economy. And apparently the only thing his white running mate knows how to do is crank out one baby after another. And now of course, her teenage daughter is pregnant out of wedlock. Because she learns it at home! But that doesn’t mean we should assume all white people are like that, just because so many of them are.

During the 2000 Republican Presidential Primaries, Slate.com writer Chris Suellentrop wrote an excellent in-depth feature article about John McCain and his role in the Keating Five. This is a must read article for every American, especially for anyone who thinks John McCainis a hero.

Two Important things to know before you read the article:

1. John McCain admitted to intentionally filing false income tax returns to defraud the IRS by not claiming thousands of dollars in gifts McCain and his family received from Charles Keating and Keating’s company. Years later, when the IRS noticed Keating’s company had written off the gifts to McCain as business expenses, McCain fessed up and admitted filing false returns and made a “donation” to the U.S. Treasury to cover the amount he defrauded American tax payers. (Committing tax fraud is one of the least offensive things John McCain has done over his career, but this article just focuses on his role in the Keating Five, and the Lincoln Savings and Loan scandal of the late 1980’s-early 1990’s). McCain also leaked information about the Keating Five to the press multiple times in an effort to appear above the other Senators in the scandal. A 1989 Phoenix New Times article summed it up best with their title - McCain: The Most Reprehensible of the Keating Five.

2. John McCain’s wife, Cindy McCain, along with her father, made a $359,000 investment in retail property owned by Charles Keating in 1986, a year before John McCain first met with federal regulators on behalf of Keating. Keating was later convicted on 73 counts of fraud, conspiracy, and other crimes. Years later, Cindy McCain sold her investment for $15,000,000.

For anyone not aware of the Keating Five, here’s a very simple summary.

Sarah Palin recently accused Obama of palling around with terrorists. This is funny because she has her own radical extremist connections that could be construed as terrorists as well. Palin accused Obama of seeing America as so imperfect, that he was pallin around with a terrorist. Funny enough Palin for years was pallin around with a group of Alaskan radicals that saw America as imperfect enough that they wanted to secede from the union.

While Obama knew Ayers years after he had reformed and began making an honest contribution to society, Palin was a member and or strongly affiliated with a radical Alaskan secessionist party whose founder died in plastic explosives deal gone bad. Her husband was definitly a member from 1995-2002 according to voting records. While is is questionable to call them terrorists, they were definitely radical secessionists who did not fall in line with the Republican credo of ‘loving America’ or McCain’s slogan ‘Country First’.

Meanwhile, while many have known about the radical Mark Chryson's - Sarah Palin's friend of 15 years - ties to AKIP, what many people miss is that Mark Chryson appears to be a batshit loopy bigoted Nazi sympathizing holocaust denying type.

Okay, it appears that web-ak.com is a webhosting company that is owned by this friend of Palin's. I went to this site and had a look around. Under the links page, we find something called the "Waco Holocaust Museum". Now, note that this is on the links page and is hosted on the same domain. In fact, it appears to be the only thing on the links page on the same domain. At the bottom of this Waco page, there are more links, a big list of them at the bottom. Half the links don't work (archive.org anyone?), but the ones that do work include:

"Seventh Seal" An 'apolitical' history of the Axis (Nazis).

"The Confederate Memorial Association"

"Brasscheck" Appears to be a 9/11 truther site.

"Real History Archives" Assorted conspiracy theories.

"Brood of Vipers" More conspiracy theories.

"Final Conflict" Incoherent website about Nationalism. The page has an article "Did six million really die?"

Enjoy!

Mark Chryson is one radical, scary and wacko dude.

And Mark Chryson was friends of the Palins for 15 years - the entire time Todd Palin was a member of this radical secessionist group, AKIP - and Chryson even helped Sarah Palin take down the Alaskan GOP chairman.

a builder named Steven Stoll, a computer repairman named Mark Chryson, and a third man named Mike Christ. All three subscribed to a bellicose, "Patriot" movement brand of politics -- far-right libertarianism with a John Birch streak.

According to Stein, Steven Stoll -- whose local nickname, according to Phil Munger, is "Black Helicopter Steve" -- was involved in militia organizing in Wasilla the 1990s, and subscribed to most of the movement's paranoid conspiracy theories: "The rumor was that he had wrapped his guns in plastic and buried them in his yard so he could get them after the New World Order took over."

This wasn't particularly unusual in the valley at the time. Like much of the rural Northwest, survivalist worldviews often led to Patriot organizing activity and its attendant paranoia: "There were other folks who also got all worked up about the supposed Y2K thing," Stein said, recalling a home he'd looked at with a full array of bunkers and stored food supplies.

But Stoll, Mike Christ, and Mark Chryson were a special case: "They would demonstrate in front of the Wasilla Council," recalled Stein, saying that the causes varied but invariably involved an animus to "socialist" government, such as planning and public education. "This same group [Stoll, Christ, and Chryson] also challenged me on whether my wife and I were married because she had kept her maiden name. So we literally had to produce a marriage certificate. And as I recall, they said, ‘Well, you could have forged that.’ "

And they were a vocal part of Sarah Palin's base of support.

Look... These two incompetent, corrupt and failed conservatives can try to distract you from the GOP's economic legacy that is unfolding before your very eyes right now with BS about Obama as an 8 year old BUT I guarantee we will talk about what these two have done as irresponsible adults.

This financial crisis is a direct result of the greed and irresponsibility that has dominated Washington and Wall Street for years. It’s the result of speculators who gamed the system, regulators who looked the other way, and lobbyists who bought their way into our government. It’s the result of an economic philosophy that says we should give more and more to those with the most and hope that prosperity trickles down to everyone else; a philosophy that views even the most common-sense regulations as unwise and unnecessary. Well, this crisis is nothing less than a final verdict on this failed philosophy – and it’s a philosophy I’m running for President to end.

Bart Russell is the Executive Director of Connecticut's Council of Small Towns.

His group wants the state's FOI Commission to issue an advisory opinion on the law that went into effect Wednesday that requires municipalities to post information from public meetings on the Internet.

Under the new law, meeting agendas must be up twenty-four hours in advance and minutes posted within seven days after a meeting. Russell says the towns want to be transparent but the time constraints aren't reasonable.

Blogrolling Policy -This is a liberal blog and I have a liberal Blogrolling policy. I will add anyone to my Blogroll who adds me to theirs, whether conservative, liberal, moderate, libertarian, or even non-political, with the exception of spam blogs... If you Blogroll me and notice that I have not returned the favor, nudge me in the comments here until I notice!

Larry Craig and David Vitter — “two United States Senators implicated in extramarital sexual activity” — have named themselves as co-sponsors of S.J. Res. 43, the Marriage Protection Amendment. If passed, the bill would amend the Constitution to declare that marriage “shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman.”